Tulane University has recently announced the establishment of the Stacy Mandel Palagye and Keith Palagye Program for Middle East Peace. Beginning in the spring of 2015, 15 undergraduate students will be selected to participate in a unique summer immersion opportunity. Read more...

Thanks to a generous gift from Stacy Mandel Palagye and Keith Palagye, the Jewish Studies Department would like to announce an exciting new abroad program offered Summer 2015.

Fifteen Tulane undergraduates will have the opportunity to learn about Middle East Peace in a new international program. Students selected will spend two weeks in the classroom at Tulane and then will travel to Jerusalem, Israel for three weeks. This program is free to the students and will involve three weeks of classes, tours, lectures and meetings with important players in the peace process. Students will be studying and residing at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Classes and lectures will take place in the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Students will be selected based on academic merit, maturity and motivation. We will look closely at students who have studied either Arabic or Hebrew language, and have displayed an academic commitment to the study of Israel and the Middle East. All Tulane students are welcome to apply and will be considered.

"This is exactly the kind of program we need. Cooperation between Jews and Arabs can form the basis for mutual understanding and hopefully, peace." says Maor Shapira, Tulane University student of Jewish Studies and Business.

About Jewish Studies

The Tulane program uses methods of history to gain accurate insights into the Jews' past; sociological analysis to find the larger patterns of Jewish behavior and social interaction; and the study of philosophy to examine the comprehensive understandings of humanity and nature proposed by Jewish thinkers.

In addition, language, literature and musicology are studied in order to explore the diverse cultural creations of the Jews and the method of social anthropology allows students to characterize Jewish religion and to define its impact upon the lives of its past and present adherents. Through these several approaches, Jewish Studies attempts to comprehend the Jewish experience in antiquity, the middle ages, and the present, and to examine the identities and ways of life that Jews have developed in order to make sense of the worlds in which they have lived.